“There has been an extraordinary demand for more masses,” my brother Bishop Ambo told me.  “Some people go to church twice on Sundays.  The churches are packed, and we don’t have enough priests to minister to everyone’s spiritual needs.”  I saw what he meant when I visited him the other day, a full week after … Read more

Our sensitivity to risk is not constant.  It is always shaped by events happening around us.  Twenty-five years ago, in November 1985, we were ready to fire the first nuclear power plant in the Philippines. A fateful last minute check demanded by international inspectors showed a few minor deficiencies in the provisions for an emergency, … Read more

Like most people now in their mid-60s, I recently joined my high school classmates in a series of reunions to mark the golden anniversary of our high school graduation. There is something extraordinary about meeting one’s classmates after fifty years. You wonder how they have changed and in what ways they have remained the same.  … Read more

Can one be political and fair at the same time? More precisely, can one be a fair-minded politician in this country? The answer, of course, is yes.  But it is the uncertainty of the answer we usually give to this question that provides Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez the warrant to denounce the case against her as … Read more

World opinion, mainly shaped by Western media, is swiftly moving in the direction of an armed international intervention in Libya.  All eyes are focused on the United States. In a recent statement, President Barack Obama declared that Libyan strongman Moammar Qadhafi “has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave.”  While making it clear that … Read more

Any Filipino politician, or diplomat, or journalist, or academic who claims to have foreseen the rapid deterioration of the political situation in Libya today must indeed have extraordinary perceptual, analytical, and predictive powers.  He or she could make billions advising the United Nations, the United States, China, and all the global corporations that control the … Read more

Edsa I had two crucial moments. The first showed the people in the streets asserting themselves as a sovereign political force.  The second belonged to the lawyers who worked behind the scenes to draft a new political order.  The people authored the series of protest actions that successfully drove away the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. But … Read more

Karl Marx, the ideologue of communism, did not think that the peasantry could be a force for socialist revolution.  There were two reasons.  First, since their quest was limited to owning land, peasants tended to be politically conservative. Second – and I think this was the more important point – the peasants in their farms, … Read more

How have we become the world’s favorite transshipment point for opium, cocaine, and heroin? How have Filipinos become the favorite couriers for such high-value drugs? The reports say that as many as 630 Filipinos are being held today for drug trafficking in various jails all over the world.  Of these, 205 are detained in Chinese … Read more

Philippines February 1986, Egypt January 2011 – both are examples of contemporary political upheavals that social scientists now call “extraordinary” moments in politics.  They signal a departure from “normal” politics — from statist politics, from institutional procedures and rituals of representation, from government by political elites and professional bureaucrats. Such moments point to the promise … Read more